Ratchet and Clank: The Tales of Kaden
by Kaden Koba
Summary: Onward to the stories of Ratchet's father Kaden, his days when he raised Percival Tachyon during the Great War, and of his days exploring the universe for a Lombax relic called the Vault of Heirs. Rated 'T' for a mild swear from Kaden.
1. Chapter 1: The Assault of Fastoon

The Universe(es). Always a strange place to live in. No matter what dimension or time.

Well, have I got some tales to tell you.

Some around a fated pair of heroes.

Some around the personal servants of the Grey God.

* * *

"Some...about the days before the assault on Fastoon. Orvus contacted me with a hologram, and told me to leave my son behind in Solana. 'I would not regret it.' was his choice of words. We were dear partners for the sake of each other's safety on the two occasions that I knew he'd left the Great Clock. He was surprised that I even knew as much as I did about the Zoni. Somehow...he meant for my little boy and his own son to meet. I never found out why. After all the years of watching my son in secret, and eventually leading Percy to him on accident...

"I had no idea the adventures that it caused for them would be so grand. Orvus was right. I do not regret him and Clank ever having met. I had no idea...because...I'm still stuck inside this berth capsule, healing slowly from my own battle with Percy. I thought it cost me my life. I felt my soul letting go. But then, like Orvus has said to me once or twice, sometimes the universe has a funny way of doing things. I believe it, considering where I am.

"If my son had never met Clank, Drek would have destroyed the world he lived on. Clank would have been scrapped; never would have made it to the Clock at all. But why am I still alive, in all this?"

"Perhaps..." A silhouette of a Lombax stood in front of a bright light that surged into the dark medical berth chamber from the hallway, "Because I can't allow myself to let my husband die, Kaden."

"Ah. Trüst."

"I'm glad that you're finally awake, dear. Telling you all those reports about your son while you were a vegetable was getting depressing." Kaden chuckled.

"Well, General, some part of me **was** paying attention. I just wish I could have gone to the Clock and told Alister off myself. It would have saved his life."

"Alister was exiled on Hathor's orders, not your opinion. I believe he knew more than you did about what was going on."

"I tried back then, tried my hardest to tell him not to trust Percy. I even tried to tell him why. The Great War ended right in front of that little one's eyes, Trüst. He might not have acutally been on Reepor when the Dimensionator was used to move the Cragmites, but considering that record of it was left...the difference is the same. I couldn't take him back. Not after seeing the fury and the vengeance burning in his eyes.

"I knew that he was going to return the favor, somehow. Make us suffer for leaving him to be the last of his kind in the universe. That's why I tried to tell Alister to not go through with getting his help. Hathor agreed with me, saying that Percy had changed, and was now more like a Cragmite than whatever my social experiment was trying to prove."

"Alister ignored us both until that day."

* * *

Ratchet & Clank: The Tales of Kaden

1

"Hey-hey! Ratchet, ol' buddy!" Qwark said as Ratchet entered the room, and had to stifle a laugh.

"Wh...what happened to you?" Qwark waved his free arm, the only part of him that wasn't in a cast.

"Oh, just a little trouble with Snowball. You know, war groks don't make very good pets unless you carry about fifty pounds of ground beef for every now and then. I think I learned that lesson the hard way."

"How'd you escape? Or even end up here?" Qwark pointed at the table next to his hospital bed. On it were a book that said "Don't Freak" in silver letters on the cover, a ring large enough to fit Qwark's fingers, and a blue pyramid that looked very familiar to Ratchet.

"Those, an asteroid, and some luck." Ratchet picked up the blue pyramid, and turned it to see that there was Lombax writing on one side of it, that read M E M O.

"Qwark. Where did you get this?"

"Oh, that? I found it in Nefarious' station while I was undercover." Ratchet touched the base of it, and it sprung to life, displaying a hologram that looked like an older Ratchet, but in different armor.

_If you're playing this message, then hello, Ratchet. You probably don't remember me, but that's because I left you on Veldin to keep you away from Tachyon. _

_ I know that he was bright for a Cragmite. That's natural for their royalty, but at least he fell for the trick involving using a gravometric warp drive that was incapable of passing through the Deepspace Helioshields. That stalled him for at least eighteen years now, even with Terachnoids working on a solution. I still laugh about it, but today is a horrible day for the both of us. _

_ Tachyon's fleet passed by Veldin while I was relaxing there, and here I am, at the assault on Metropolis, to protect Mayor Sasha. She tells me that you're a love interest of hers. You dog, you're already chasing Cazars at your age. Haha. But anyway, I have a story to tell you. A story that, naturally, you're going to run into bits and pieces of with each of these hologram storage units. I want to begin, I think, with how we managed to escape from Fastoon, and yes, Sasha and Helga are listening to every word right now, too._

_ HELLO, LOMBAX!_ Helga said from off-vision, as the image changed to that of a shinier, intact Fastoon.

----------------

The Assault on Fastoon, 21 Years Ago

Kaden looked forlorn as Percival gave the Lombaxes a cheery wave while he walked up the ramp of his star cruiser. He turned to face his rust-red colored ship and sighed. They were totally oblivious to what might happen to them in a matter of hours, if not days.

"Aphelion. I'd like for you to give me a link to your radar, so I can keep an eye out for the zero hour."

"You know that he's going to attack today for sure?" Kaden looked up at the star cruiser as it flew into the sky.

"He's leaving, and he's fairly satisfied. I assume that today is the day. I pray that it's not. Getting the baby away from Rayna so I can move him to Solana is going to be tougher for me than staring down an army of Drophyds empowered by our own weapons." Aphelion did as Kaden asked, and he walked towards the main citadel.

"Kaden!" A fat yellow Lombax jogged up to him, donning a size-adjusted suit for the Praetorian Guard. "What's going on in that half-robot head of yours now?"

"I have to get my son to Solana, Hathor." Hathor looked a little scared. Kaden was definitely the most brazen Lombax he'd ever met, and he was only an unranked soldier in the Praetorian Guard for ever since he joined.

"What? Without even Naming the boy? You know Rayna won't let him go without a name!"

"That's why I said to myself what I said near Aphelion. It's that part that's going to be hard. Half a brain of positronic circuitry, and I still haven't Named him even after two years."

"Why is it so hard?"

"Because...that little Cragmite up in our orbit by now...that was the name I was going to give my son. I treated Percy with...all the love and care that a father could give. When he packed up and left in front of me, well...I suppose that's when the whole experiment fell apart. Rayna having a new baby didn't help things."

"You tried to rescue Percival from being a Cragmite, I know. But that's...Kaden, that's what he IS. There was no changing it. If anything else, the experiment sticks in his head as some, I dunno, some kind of blatant lie that makes him hate us more for tricking him."

"The sad thing is that I still feel attachment to him. I feel like there is some kind of redemption that I have to offer to Percy. Some way to try and...I suppose you can have your disgust at me for saying this, but some way to tell him that I still love him enough that I didn't want to see him get so hurt over it all."

Hathor laughed.

"What?"

"You wanted me to feel disgust about that? Kaden, I've known your oddball family for ever since Percival was hatched! I've gotten used to it! I know, you're uneasy and kind of expecting trouble at any given moment, but-"

----

Percival watched the surveillance feeds from high orbit on his ship. He allowed himself a smirk, half-brazen, half-amused, all-enraged. So his 'father' had the gall to still pity him, even after all the warnings he clearly and cleverly caught. That softness had to go. He turned his attention towards Hathor for a brief moment, and thought _THAT softness has to go, too, the ridiculous butterball_. Then he turned back to Kaden.

----

"So, you got a name for the boy, yet?" Kaden shut his eyes and turned to face the door to Creche Chamber 13. He took a deep breath and exhaled.

"Nope. I'm still going to try and get him to Solana." Hathor let out a sqwak.

"Kaden!" The Creche Chamber door opened, and Kaden walked up to the female Lombax and the toddler that stood next to her, happily munching a Pabocac fritter.

"Rayna?" She turned to face Kaden.

"Dah!" The toddler raised up his arms, signaling that he wanted to be picked up.

"I'm sorry, but...I...I couldn't. There wasn't any other name that I was going to use than Percival Tachyon Koba. I couldn't think of anything different, and I really didn't want to-"

"I know. Associate our real son with that? Haha. Kaden, it's fine. You really wanted that name for our son, then go ahead." Kaden looked at the toddler.

"Is that okay with you? Percy?"

"Buh-crab scawy, dah!" And the todder shoved his fritter at Kaden's face. He sniffed it a couple times and lit up. Somehow, this went by easier than he thought it would.

"Is this Pabocac?" Rayna nodded.

"Fresh from Torren IV before I made those fritters. Bless the Vullards when they do have produce." Kaden and Rayna both laughed. Kaden, however, stopped after a few seconds, with an alert look on his face.

"Something's wrong. Aphelion! Why'd the radar go out?!"

[I have confirmed camera visual, Kaden. Tachyon's dropships are entering Fastoon's atmosphere. They're jamming all communications that monitor the planet, so I expect-]

"Aphelion? Aphelion!!" Kaden turned to face Hathor. "We're being invaded by Tachyon! Get the civilians into the Court of Azimuth! Alert the remaining active Praetorian Guard!" Kaden turned around to face Rayna again, and she was met with silence.

"Can't decide whether to ask me to fight or to hide with the others?"

"Rayna...if everything goes...as I think the universe's order goes...then it won't make a difference either way." Alister ran up into the doorway as Hathor jogged away.

"What's going on?! Kaden, what are you doing just standing there?!"

"I have to get my son to safety. I'm going to the emergency docks. Tell Aphelion that I order her to lend you support. Rayna."

"Yeah?"

"Go with Alister." Rayna shook her head.

"No. I'm going with you. We can't expect to protect Percy and fight this invasion all the way to the escape dock. I'll hold him."

"Right. Alister, get going and help protect the others." Alister nodded and they all went separate ways.

"We'll cut through the citadel to the docks, hopefully there won't be anything to fight on the way there!" Kaden lead the way, and stopped Rayna a few meters away from a large blast that tore a hole into the right side of the hallway.

"We've got escapees running for the emergency ships! Blast them!" Several Mech-Bots with blasters started to open fire at the three Lombaxes, and Kaden jumped in front of the shots that were aimed at Rayna and his son, and deflected them back at the Mech-Bots with his Omniwrench. Sending their own fire back at them, Kaden prepared a cluster of bombs that armed in mid-air after he tossed them towards the startled Mech-Bots.

"Let's go!" Kaden took Rayna by the hand and they ran past the stunned group of Tachyon's Mech-Bots.

"Don't let them escape!" Kaden's son clapped his hands and squealed in excitement at the explosions and sounds of battle as Kaden fought off the Drophyds whenever they caught up to them. He clapped his hands and pointed at the Drophyds that had their containment tanks busted, which were quite frightened without their big robotic toys to attack with.

"Gow-fish! Gow-fish! Aw. Go squish gow-fish."

"Yes. They go squish because they're bad goldfish, son." They were almost to the docks and Kaden heard loud clunking noised from behind him. "Oh, that can't be good."

He turned around and tried to urge Rayna to keep running for the docks. Three Enforcers and Tachyon himself were approaching casually, Tachyon's eyes fixed not on Kaden, but on Rayna and the toddler.

"So. You thought you could keep even one of your kind away from me. A pity that everyone else is rushing off to die and you're running away with your family. Coward! I think I'm going to take that child of yours for myself, and he will be my junior! Yes, one day, he will be the prince of my empire, and you, dear Lombaxes, will be gone, leaving him the only one of his kind! How does it feel to have revenge exacted upon you?!"

"Strangely enough, I've been expecting this for so long that I really don't feel that frightened of it. I honestly don't know what to feel." Kaden said with a stern look on his face.

"Then how about I SHOW you what to feel?!" Percival charged up a pair of lasers from the arms of his walking throne, aiming one at him and one at Rayna, but hit the ceiling instead as Kaden threw another cluster of bombs, one exploding right in front of Tachyon's face. The rubble blocked him and the Enforcers from being able to reach them immediately, but the time they had was short.

"Let's go!" They ran to the docks, and Aphelion sat there waiting. "No, Aphelion. Go help Alister and the Praetorian Guard. We'll try to come back for you."

"They're already gone. They've vanished from the Court of Azimuth."

"Then...protect what's left there. It's too valuable to let Tachyon run into it even by accident. Please. Where I'm going with them, you can't follow just yet."

Aphelion hovered upward, and turned to face Tachyon's walking throne coming in from an alternate door. She understood. Kaden was following Orvus' orders.

"Kaden, take Percy and run. You know where you were going to go, don't you?" Rayna offered the toddler to him. In a dumbstruck moment, he actually took Percy in his arms, who whispered 'buh-crab scawy, dah' to him. Rayna jumped into the cockpit of Aphelion.

For one moment, he could only watch in horror and shock, and remember one word, constantly reverbing and echoing in his mind.

_Destiny._

He ran for the nearest emergency ship. They were unarmed, but swift enough to escape any blockade of larger vessels. Turning it on, and flying in the opposite way of where Tachyon was, he nosed the ship up and out of Fastoon's atmosphere.

_Destiny._ It continued to ring in his head.

"Mama, dah." Kaden looked at his son, and he started to cry.

_Destiny._ He was at a loss for words. He couldn't tell the boy she was gone.

"Dah?"

"Dad's...very sad, Percy. Mama gone."

"Afeeon, too?" Kaden turned back to look where he was going.

"Yes...Aphelion, too."

_Destiny._ He didn't curse Orvus. He couldn't curse Orvus. He cursed time instead. In the back of his mind, he cursed time. He also cursed the fact that three assault ships had turned around and given chase to him. He set the ship to jump towards the Solana Galaxy, and got hit by a lucky potshot near the underside of the ship, which thankfully didn't rip it open, as it sped up and disappeared into hyperspace.

----------------

21 Years Later...

_They're all gone. Who was left have escaped, all except my wife. We're probably the last ones, now. Us and a few scattered families. But...as long as I can get you away, my son, I won't regret ever having listened to Orvus. After all, when he's being serious, he means every word._

_ One day, boy, you'll play this message, and I hope the first thing that you do is save yourself. Please. I beg of you, save yourself from Percival Tachyon. What?! No! Sasha, run!!_ And the message fizzled out.

"Qwark. Where did you say you got this?" Ratchet said with a shaky voice.

"Nefarious' lair, of course! While I was undercover, I saw this little pyramid thing on his desk and...well...I took it."

"This is a-" Ratchet choked on a sob, "-meh-message from...my...my dad. It was...recorded the day that Tachyon attacked Metropolis."

"Oh! That's right! I remember him now! That Lombax left you on Veldin in a nursery's care program, saying-"

"He wanted to keep me away from someone dangerous, right?"

"Er, yeah." Ratchet looked about ready to leap up onto Qwark in excitement.

"Tell me what you can tell me!"

"D'huh?" Ratchet gazed at Qwark with expectation. He might have been an ego-puffed moron ninety-nine percent of the time, but this could well be the only one percent of genuine memory Qwark ever possessed.

But, how did Qwark know Ratchet's own father?

"Oh, alright. Don't get your tail tied in a knot. I don't have much better stuff to do than to ogle a nurse that doesn't have half Helga's looks." Qwark sighed and let out a small 'ow' from inside of his near-full body cast. "Anyway, it all began on Planet Veldin..."

----------------

Kyzil Plateau, Planet Veldin, 21 Years Ago

"Dammit, those Drophyds ruined the warp drive! Augh, the ship's useless now." Kaden cursed his luck. He'd made it to Solana, but just barely. It was a fringe planet of desert and cliffs, and looked like it barely had any settlements to it at all. Not that it was uninhabited, though. He picked up Percy and started walking to the nearest gathering of buildings in the place.

After a few hours of walking, he'd seen a crowd of Novalians, with a few robots, Cazars, and Markazians, even a Tyrhhanoid; men, women and children--especially children, nearby a man in a green and grey spandex suit, who bore a chin that made Jay Limo's look like a tiny wart.

"Come one, come all and get an autographed poster of Captain Qwark! Now at the Kyzil Plateau!" A speaker blared in repetition nearby. It reminded him of the GrummelNet booths back in Polaris.

Another twinge of homesickness. He loved making crazy things for GrummelNet in his spare time. He sighed and walked up among the crowd, who parted at the sight of him. Among all of the others, he and his son were the only ones in the galaxy they'd probably seen that looked the way they did. _That's right. They've probably never met a Lombax in Solana before._

"Whoa." Even Qwark said with a margin of awe. "Never seen guys like you around, and I get all over this galaxy. Saving the innocent and stuff, you know."

"I've seen you on holovision shows that would air in the Polaris galaxy when I was a kid. You're Captain Qwark?"

"I'm real enough to be awesome for me!" Qwark said with a flourish and a flex of his arms. "Here. The tyke might not remember it, but have an autographed poster."

"Thanks." Kaden looked around at the crowd, "Does anyone here run a nursery? Someplace that I can keep him safe from a dangerous man?"

"Buh-crab scawy, dah." Kaden chuckled as the toddler buried his face into Kaden's chest.

"That's not 'buh-crab', son. That's Captain Qwark." The toddler looked up at Qwark and pointed.

"Kee-pom Quack!" And the toddler squealed in laughter, as Qwark picked him up and looked into his eyes.

"You know, I get the feeling like this little tyke's hero material. I see adventure in his eyes." Kaden looked up at Qwark as a Markazian couple approached.

"If he ever does get into that kind of trouble, he gets it from me."

"Excuse me," The Markarzian woman spoke to them, "Did you need someone to keep your son safe?" Kaden nodded.

"We're foster parents. I'm Chase, and she's Matre." The man spoke next.

"Really?"

"Yes. We've sheltered children before from dangerous circumstances. The Blarg aren't too friendly in this galaxy. You're both Lombaxes, right?" Matre asked.

"Yes. How did-"

"It was only ten years ago when the Great War in Polaris ended. We heard the Lombaxes were victorious, but now you're saying someone dangerous is after you."

"There's still one Cragmite left. He attacked Fastoon with an army of robotically-enhanced Drophyds, and...far as I know, me and my son are the only refugees." Matre put her hands over her mouth.

_...guess I'm going to have to come to terms with it, sooner or later._ Kaden looked toward the ground.

"Terrible." Matre whispered.

"We'll take him, so that even if you don't make it, he'll be safe, at least. What's his name?"

"His name?" Kaden looked at the toddler in Qwark's arms, and saw a hangar-like garage nearby. He stared at it for a while, and then turned to face the couple, Qwark, and his son. _That's right. His name isn't Percival Tachyon. That name has become synonymous with our grief._

"I never did give him his Name." _I'm a fool. All the brilliance I have didn't prepare me for...destiny. Orvus, what do I do?_

'Trust in him.' echoed in the wind. Kaden's ears twitched.

"Ratchet." The baby turned to face Kaden. "He'll answer to that." Qwark let Ratchet down to the ground, and he clumsily waddled to Kaden. "Ratchet."

"Dah?"

"Dad has to go far from here. I won't even be on this world. They'll be here to take care of you. Is that alright?"

"Hungry, dah." Kaden smiled. _No, you don't even care at all._

"Come take him." Chase and Matre picked Ratchet up, and carried him to their home.

"Oh, I've got to get back to Kerwan shortly." Qwark said.

"Wait, Qwark." Qwark turned his head to face Kaden. "Take me with you. I need to be able to get a new ship, and it'd be better if I didn't get it here. Less paper trail."

"I see. You don't want that guy following you that easily." Kaden shook his head.

"No, I don't. His name is Percival Tachyon, and I'm not sure how far away he is from chasing me."

"From the sound of him, he's a pretty rotten guy. I'll do what I can for you! After all, I am a superhero!"

----------------

Back in the Present

Ratchet hung on every word that Qwark could recall, and despite the amazement in the back of his mind that Qwark could remember so much, Ratchet could tell he was on the verge of crying.

_He named me...after my hangar. Why in the world did I think that was my name? Did I know I was going to own the place one day? And Qwark...Qwark wouldn't remember my father this easily unless..._

"How often did you two, er...go on a wild adventure?"

"Like the ones we've had against Dr. Nefarious ourselves? Oh, I can't remember how often, but it was a lot. Come to think of it, I dunno if your dad was or wasn't involved with my first fight against him. It's all...kinda blurry after he got his own ship. I just saw him around a lot."

_He must have become a hero here himself. A 'sidekick' in the shadow of Qwark, like me._

"I remember he was looking for something important. Something about hairs." Ratchet looked at Qwark with a sudden incredulous expression. Hairs? "Aah, Al might know a little more than I do."

"Qwark?"

"Hmm?" Ratchet put a hand on Qwark's uncasted arm.

"Thanks, for everything. You aren't as much of a buffoon as I thought you were."

"Hehe, your father always said that I had the right stuff. And that I wasn't as much of a moron as anyone who says so thinks. Better remember that, Ratchet." Ratchet smiled. _Yeah. I think I'm beginning to see that._

"I will."


	2. Vault of Heirs Introduction

"Well?" Clank asked as he got out of a chair that he took a seat at.

"Aah, Qwark's okay. And we've got at least one lead, though I do kinda want to head back to the old hangar at Veldin and see if anything's there that I missed first." Clank eyed the blue pyramid still in Ratchet's left hand.

"What is that? It looks kind of like the map to Rykan V." Ratchet held it up for Clank to see.

"This? This is a message that my dad left for me. He, well, said for me to save myself from Tachyon before anything else. That, and nothing that I didn't already know."

"Well, play it again." Ratchet sighed.

"Okay." As the hologram of Kaden spoke, Clank's eyes grew wide. Especially at the mention of Orvus.

"Ratchet! Your father knew my father!"

"Huh?" Ratchet replayed it again. "Whoa. I didn't notice that part. I was a little too shocked by the message itself."

"Well? Where are we headed?"

"Like I said. To Veldin, back to my old home."

----------------

"So, he's actually here in this hospital, Trüst?" The armored Lombax nodded.

"Doubt he knows you are, though, Kaden. One of those right under your nose kind of things. He was only here to see Qwark." Kaden chuckled from inside the breath mask of the berth capsule.

"He thinks I'm dead, too. Best to leave things like this. If we run into each other while searching for the Vault, then I guess it'll be a little surprise for him. Ah, Clank's here too."

"Those two are as inseperable as the destiny of theirs that you claim Orvus knew about." Kaden looked at the bio-signs monitor on the capsule. Apparently, he was already fully healed.

"So, when are they projecting my release?"

"Well, first, they have to install a new brain into your cybernetic side. Procuring one from the Concordance isn't easy nowadays, so it'll probably be another month at the most."

"A month to turn to mush in this thing." Trüst sighed.

"The capsule's keeping your higher cognitives working, Kaden. You'd be wonkier than a Zoni away from its hive without it."

"I suppose. But tell the doctor that I want out of it if a week passes and no new brain." Trüst waved a hand as the Lombax turned to watch Ratchet and Clank both leave the hallway.

"Sure thing, dear."

----------------

"The place is an empty wreck, Ratchet. I doubt that there's anything left to lead you to more about your father." Clank eyed the huge rip that cleaved the hangar in two, left from the days that Dr. Nefarious tried to turn all of Solana into robots.

"Maybe...not entirely." Ratchet eyed the signed poster of Captain Qwark. He'd had that all his life, aside of one time when it disappeared for half-a-day, and then, as mysteriously as it vanished, it was back, in the same place, and the same condition. Like nothing really happened. "I always wondered why this poster vanished for a short while. It was actually three days before we met when that happened. Hehe, it even dodged being destroyed by the Tyrhhanoid's assault on this place."

"Maybe this poster has Qwark's strange streak of good luck?" Clank laughed at his own comment.

"Or maybe it was meant to be something else..." Ratchet fishes in the pockets of his armor for the Zoni vessel, which now had only three Zoni left inside, as the others stayed with Sigmund and the Great Clock. He opened the lid, and the Zoni flew out, surrounding the poster and revealing an invisible print in "Lombax writing! Thank goodness it's simple enough for me to read it. Let's see..."

_ Ratchet,_

_ I wonder if you'll ever figure this message out? Anyway, why bother looking for me, when you should make your next adventure to search for an old relic of ours called the "Vault of Heirs"? Do your father proud, son!_

_ Kaden Koba_

"Vault...of Heirs?" Clank looked up at the Zoni, which swirled back into the vessel. Ratchet looked pensive for a minute, and then exclaimed in surprise.

"Hairs!" Clank looked at Ratchet funny. "That's what Qwark was trying to say about what Dad was looking for! This Vault of Heirs thing!"

"But, surely you don't mean to postpone looking for your family just for this?"

"Look, Dad said in the message that it's an old relic of the Lombaxes, right? I might be able to find more out about them anyway if I DO look for it!"

"But...Ratchet...This poster's backside was probably used as a pre-mortem graffiti for him to play some kind of joke on you."

"Clank, think about this: Why would Dad go through the trouble to write something like this in a type of ink that the bio-energy of the Zoni can reveal? It might be important to...well, it might be important to a lot of stuff!"

"You don't mean your father, do you?"

"I-well, yeah, I want to find him. I want to know if he's really gone or not. But all these little hints that I'm finding now that make me feel like he's been watching me for my whole life, well...it makes me think that he's probably alive, and doesn't want to be found just yet. So why don't we look for this Vault of Heirs, and maybe we'll find out more about the Lombaxes, too!" Clank almost tried to counter that, but thought otherwise in a moment.

"We will need help. Do you want Talwyn to come along?"

_ Now that I think about it..._ "Yeah. And maybe Al, too." Ratchet looked up at Aphelion, "You ready for another adventure?"

"I'm always ready for when you're about to cause trouble, Ratchet. Your father was notorious for taking me everywhere during the Great War--oops!"

"HEY! You said you'd forgotten everything other than laying cover fire over the Court of Azimuth!" Aphelion soared into the air and started recklessly flying herself around, acting like a woman fretting molehills into mountains.

"Silly, ditzy tounge slip! I just got excited to see some action again for the first time in two months and off my mouth went! Oh well, at least I want to see what he had been up to! He left me on Fastoon with your mother and didn't come back! For a moment, when you fixed me, I thought that he HAD returned you know. You look just like him when he first built me."

"Huh. And I was trying to fix the old escape ship that my dad used to get to Kyzil Plateau in the first place." Aphelion started to set herself down nearby Ratchet.

"You clearly lack his talent. Are you up for an adventure of his magnitude?

"If I don't, and he's not alive, who's going to look for the Vault of Heirs?" Clank thought for a moment and then answered.

"Pirates?"

----------------

This part of the story will continue

in

"Ratchet and Clank: The Vault of Heirs"

Now, on with "Tales of Kaden"


	3. Chapter 2: The Origin of Mustachio

2

_Running. Still running from Tachyon even after leaving my son on that planet called Veldin. Thank goodness it was only his army, for now. Thank goodness that it seems the little prank I set up for them worked. Not even Pollyx will crack that nut easily, and he's a Terachnoid._

"So, you're on the run?" Qwark asked Kaden, who just stared off into the star ocean. "Lucky to be rescued, eh? Don't worry! I'll get you to Metropolis in style, and you can go from there! I just have one question, though." Kaden turned to look at Qwark.

"Er, go ahead."

"What was with the little tyke? And the name you gave him, uh, Ratchet, was it?" Kaden nodded.

"I had to leave him there. I can't let Tachyon find us both."

"I was about to say," Kaden took in a breath, "you couldn't have picked a manlier name for a future sidekick?" And promptly exhaled in a mix of relief and laughter. This really was THE Captain Qwark of the holovision shows he watched as a kid back on Fastoon.

"What? What's so funny? I mean; Qwark and Ratchet: Dynamic Duo of Daring-Do? That doesn't really sound all that cool." Kaden's laughter turned into a silent howling fit.

"Neh..." Kaden fought to catch his breath. "Not at all! Just drop the end part and it'll be much better."

"Really?"

"Sure! Corny titles were only meant for vid-comics, anyway."

"Speaking of vid-comics, have you seen the latest issue of _The Random Misadventures of..._? Starring yours truly." Qwark said while raising his eyebrows in an attempt of suggestive sales.

"Nah, never was a fan of Jack Allsman's work. I might have to take a look."

"Splendid! I'll see about getting you a copy half off."

----------------

"Yah, and we're going to da fitness course as soon as he gets back! No worming out of exercise with another commercial, or building opening, or book signing for him today! Hah!" Standing near 9 feet tall and half as wide, the ex-Valkyrie-now Qwark's fitness trainer, Helga-XL, slapped Darla Gratch on the back, which by the force of it knocked her to the ground. Darla would have gotten back up and dusted her pink suit dress off, except that Qwark's ship had landed on her head. "Oh, speak of da green devil, there he is!" Helga said, with a miffed look as usual for her.

Tabloid reporters and cameramen crowded around the ship hatch as it opened, and Captain Qwark stepped out, followed by Kaden, who in the shock of din and flashing lights covered his ears and squinted a bit.

"Captain Qwark, is the message of the 'Voyager' the Planetary Defense Center caught several months ago really an ancient invasion warning from a unknown planet?" Qwark looked caught off guard by that question and tried to push through, running into a reporter with a tape recorder that looked and talked like Animal.

"!" Yet another shoved a second recorder up to his face.

"Is it true that you're still a 300-pound fat kid in spandex?" That question made Qwark scowl.

"Is that a Lombax with you?" Another one asked. Last straw. Quark admired public press, yes, but he hated tabloids.

"Yes and that's the only question that I'm answering for you stool pigeons!" Qwark hoisted Kaden up onto his shoulder and stormed off, passing Helga and hopping into the hovertaxi nearby. "Stupid paparazzi and their bottomfeeding." He muttered as Helga climbed aboard.

"So, you're a Lombax, eh, girly pipsqueak?" Helga asked brusqely.

"And you're a Valkyrie-"

"EX-Valkyrie, no thanks to my husband Harry getting us both SO lost that we not only couldn't find the pilgrimage, we also somehow ended up here! That, and Cassiopea was being a bimbo and kicked me out. At least my sister Libra is still there. Hehe. I'm Helga, Qwark's personal trainer. You?"

"Kaden Koba." Kaden looked around. "Where are we going?"

"Well, first, to get you a ship and a disguise, and then-"

"To da fitness course, Lard of the Rings!"

"D'argh!"

----------------

Kaden adjusted the fake glasses and mustache, both a horrible shade of violet that clashed with his yellow and brown fur, before walking up to an available robot secretary inside the Solana Licensing Office. She looked up and spoke in a shocking three-pack-a-day voice.

"Name?" Kaden froze. He couldn't risk raising his profile here.

"Muh...Mustachio Furioso." The secretary typed it in.

"Species?"

"Kitty." She raised an eyebrow and typed it in.

"Location?"

"Flurbian Galaxyverse, Planet Kartün." The secretary put her hands on her hips.

"Sir, I'm beginning to think that you're flipping my boot switch." Kaden sighed and pushed a couple buttons on a thin device on his wrist. From it, an egg-shaped machine telescoped out of it, as though a hologram at first, but becoming solid in a split second. He took it in his hand, and fiddled with two of the three dials on top of it. Aside of those, it was impossible to tell it apart from a plain old egg.

When he finished, a small hologram with unusual coordinates popped up. "There, see? I'm not lying about where I'm from."

"Wow, an extradimensional visitor! Who woulda thought?" Qwark layered schmooze into his exclamation. "Say, what else can that egg do?"

_Qwark...I'm actually surprised that you know how to read dimensional coordinates._ Kaden thought to himself.

"It's just an interdimensional map based on a joint project by both religious and scientific figures in the Flurbian Galaxyverse. I was project head." Kaden winked at the secretary with a cool expression on his face. The secretary looked rather flattered at Kaden's statement and his pose.

"You must be an important scientist to come so far from a place no one here would be able to say with a straight face, and I like smart guys." The secretary finished typing up the info necessary for his documentation, as well as wielded a jackhammer-sounding machine to print out a small plastic slip, and then handed Kaden _Mustachio Furioso's _ship piloting license. "There you go, sweetie. Buh-bye."

Helga grabbed Qwark by the arm as the trio walked out of the building. "Now you, mine green-beer summer sausage, are coming with me!"


	4. Chapter 3: A Memory of Old Days

3

Kaden was thankful that bolts were accepted virtually anywhere. They were of value for several reasons.

First, they were used to build stuff, so they represented the parts necessary to put what you were buying together, or in the case of something like a holo-vid, used to maintain the equipment that made objects like those.

Second, they were metal. A recyclable resource that you could melt down and recast into something else.

Third, when you're a Lombax, bolts are the **only** currency you have.

But that wasn't a problem for Kaden at all. Kerwan, like most every other economy in the known universe, accepted bolts, which made it easy for him to buy a ship and move himself to the Betta sector of Solana, towards the territory of the Concordance. He could only hope that Tachyon had either lost interest, or couldn't actually pursue.

----------------

"You...imbecile! How could you have let them escape?! You were right on his tail! What happened?!"

"Our ships bounced off of the Deepspace Helioshield, sir. None of our craft have a strong enough warp drive to get through them to pursue out of the galaxy."

"WHAT?!" Tachyon threw a tantrum for a few seconds, then settled down enough to be able to talk. "How could I let those infernal Lombaxes outwit me?! Augh, I'm a fool! You!" Tachyon pointed his scepter at the Mech-Bot that gave Tachyon the report of their failed pursuit of Kaden. "Tell those Terachnoids in Engineering that we need stronger warp drives, NOW!!!"

_Those evil relics the Chironians left behind are NOT going to stop me._

----------------

"I'm sorry, Kaden. Hathor told me that I couldn't follow. Not until 'I had cleaned up the mess I made'. The Dimensionator was left in the Court of Azimuth, but I put it in Kephlion's cargo for safer keeping."

"I don't want to risk coming back for it. Alister, can you drop it in the holo-film orientation chamber at Rykan V? That version's a piece of trash, anyway. It broke more than half the time it was used."

"Sure." Kaden breathed a sigh of relief, and then lit up as he thought about something else.

"Oh! Were there other families that weren't on Fastoon or in Polaris at the time?"

"Far as I know, there's a refuge in Solana, and the Crosses are going there for a while. But, Kaden, that refuge isn't what they think it is. It's mostly criminal exiles, and they've done more atrocious things than my misplaced judgement. I hear they've become a gang of planet traders."

"Does Tachyon have any knowledge about it?"

"I doubt he knows there are Lombaxes there, but he does know about the planet trade." Alister looked worried about Kaden's choice of destination. "Won't you come back to Polaris? We can still be together, for old time's sake, you know. Race around the Molonoth Fields for fun. Admire the sunset view in Volgrom Pass."

"Tickle you while you're falling asleep, thinking it won't get better than this." Kaden gazed up into space with a smile. "I might. But there's something I'd like to do first, Alister. I need to go to that refuge to confirm something, and maybe get a little help."

"Kaden, where you're going is--I already told you that they're exiles for heinous crimes!"

"Alister. I somehow want to believe that not trusting your old friend is a more heinous crime than killing defenseless people outright. You should be responsible for the attack that took place on Fastoon, since those lives lost were OUR people, lives that could have been spared if you had believed me when I said taking Percy back was a bad idea." Alister looked stricken for words for a moment. He badly wanted to believe that he hadn't made a mistake. He wanted to believe that they'd all just been caught off guard.

"Reward over consequence, right?" Kaden let out a tic of breath.

"_Reward over consequence, as long as you put your own life on the line and no one else's_. That was how it went, Alister." Alister turned the communicator off, irritated at Kaden correcting him.

Kaden sighed and set his nav computer to jump to a planet called Ostrillia. "Criminial exiles now planet traders? Wonder what they've gone about calling themselves?" He looked around the cockpit and felt disappointed. No radio and no holovision screen. He missed having Aphelion. She made his hyperspace jumps entertaining, one way or another.

He fell asleep mintues after mulling about his boredom.

----------------

"Unidentified ship, serial U-235, this is Amaury Azimuth of _Blau Cannon_! State your business of presence! This is your last warning or I will open fire!"

"Zzzzzzzzzzz..." Went over the comlink. Kaden slept through the fifth hailing in a row. Another voice, higher pitched yet fairly masculine, spoke to the hailing pilot.

"Just tow the ship in, Amaury. Don't hurt it's pilot."

"But, General-"

"No buts. The bio-scan on your ship's datafeed says it's a Lombax aboard." Amaury blinked and raised his left eyebrow in disbelief.

"Another one? We've had a whole family arrive not but two hours ago. What the hell happened on Fastoon that made six Lombaxes all come here in that span of time?"

"What did you expect? There's a Cragmite loose with an army attacking half of Polaris, claming to rebuild their old empire. Some said the Praetorian Guard barely had enough time to evacuate the remaining people on Fastoon to another dimension, while the planet now lies in ruins. I can only pray that Cragmite didn't find the Dimensionator." Amaury locked a tether onto Kaden's ship and pulled it down towards the planet.

"Who do you think this one is?"

"If he's from Fastoon, I might have an idea. And he's not here just to hide."

----------------

_Aphelion. Mumrmrr...Aphelion...where are we? Aphelion? Why won't you answer?_ Kaden struggled to listen for any sound of a spaceship. Nothing, but-

_Wind, and birds?_ Kaden opened his eyes in surprise. He was in a large, beautiful bed, fitted with white colored sheets that soaked up his warmth and radiated it back to him. He was wrapped in them from feet to nose, and confused.

_Where am I?_ Kaden looked around the room, noticing the influences of Lombax architecture and art in the room, including a half-disassembled Concordance Riding Armor, which didn't feel as out of place as it looked. He saw the door open and scrambled to untangle himself from the sheet that he was wrapped in, as a black-furred Lombax with mahogany colored stripes walked into the room, towling himself off.

"I see that you're awake. Outside of your ship, you're a very restless sleeper."

_Lomba cazares, a Black Breed!_ Kaden thought in excitement. "Who are you?" He asked the black Lombax. The other Lombax stared back at him with large red-irised eyes that looked cutely demonic.

"I should be asking that, but I'll answer, since it's you, and I already know who you are. I'm Amaury Azimuth. We've met once."

"Huh?" Kaden didn't remember.

"You're Kaden Koba, one of the last members of the Center for Advanced Lombax Research alive in this dimension. You were the head of the team that made the Beta Dimensionator. You're also..." Amaury held up Kaden's suit and looked all around it, "...from the looks of it, someone very special. This isn't Lombax technology in the suit."

"You're right. It's Zoni technology. And how do you know about...oh! So **that's** who you were! I remember now! The test on Rykan V!" Kaden nodded to himself. "Alister and Hathor agreed to let you protect the staff at the facility, but something happened there, and you were banished on false charges. If only Hathor knew the truth."

"I wasn't blameless. I didn't use it right when you asked me to test it." Amaury sunk into the foot of the bed. "I even began to think that it really was my fault."

"Not at all. It was a bug on our part. The Dimensionator should never have been able to go to that place. That was a room reserved for the Great Builders."

"You mean...we accidentally ended up in the the throne room of the gods?" Kaden nodded.

"I saw things there that terrified me. Maybe it was purpose that it backfired the way it did, because it gave me insight into how badly the Beta Dimensionator could fail."

"How badly?" Kaden's ears lowered and he glanced to the side, at his suit.

"Let's just say that we could have undone all of the gods' marvelous work with just the pull of a cord." Kaden grabbed his suit and slid out of the bed, putting it on while blushing. He didn't mind being naked, but his fancies for males when he was young never truly went away, so dressing in front of one felt awkward to him, but Amaury looked absolutely shocked in grief. "I have to ask."

_Oh no, I forgot he was nude under that! _"I'm so sorry! It wasn't my fault at all, the General--" Kaden turned to look at Amaury.

"Who?"

"General Trüst Dominox, sir. Sh-he's the-the one who-" Kaden sat down in a nearby chair as Amaury continued to try and babble modesty back into himself. "-and I'm really sorry, sir!"

"Are we going to meet fairly soon?" Amaury squeaked.

"Teh-the General? Uh..." That pause was interrupted by the same higher pitched yet masculine voice that told Amaury to take Kaden to safety.

"Only if you agree to not be vicious in your...interrogation, Kaden. Amaury might be modest to the point of timid at times, but he's fiercely protective of me." A lanky, pale-furred Lombax wearing an armor that Kaden was unfamiliar with walked into view from the open door. "Before you ask, I am Trüst Dominox. General of _Blau Cannon_. I am in charge here. Yes, I do think you're handsome for your age."

_Whoever he...she...I can't even tell, is, it overheard me and Amaury talking. So that shot most of the questions I was going to ask out the window. Looks a lot like Alister when he was young, too._ "What armor is that?" Trüst grinned.

"You like? I got it from participating in DreadZone for a season as an Exterminator. Vox was satisfied with my performance and let me go, especially when he found out who I am and where I'm from." Amaury wagged his tail and stifled his laughter while he spoke after Trüst.

"More like he totally freaked. He was afraid you'd take all his property and keep DreadZone for yourself." Trüst laughed aloud.

"Are you a man or a woman?"

"I'll leave you to figure that out, yourself." Trüst said with a flirty wink.

"Where am I?"

"Ah. Amaury didn't tell you that. You're at the Lombax Refuge on planet Ostrillia. I take exiles and others who wish to hide. Under normal circumstances, the place **could** be considered a splinter colony, but since the news about that Cragmite, we've had to keep the place under wraps. Concordance media misdirection is expensive to get, since the news is supposed to be about the truth. I don't blame them.

"Anyway, what you do from here is most certainly up to you. You can stay and live in quiet peace, or join _Blau Cannon_ and work for me, or leave and leave our protection behind completely." Kaden shook his head.

"If Tachyon's still after me, I can't endanger this planet." Trüst looked confused by Kaden's answer.

"So...you won't stay?" Kaden shook his head again.

"No, but I can't simply abandon my kind, exiled and not. If it means a margin of saftey, I'd like to join you."

"Oh!" _Sco~re!_ Trüst looked elated about that.

_Judging from the way Trüst moves and acts, I'd say it's a she._ Kaden thought as he watched Trüst happily walk away.

----------------

24 Years Before the Assault on Fastoon

"No, Kaden. I'd love to say that you can come along, but you're still too young to join the Praetorian Guard. Another couple years, and we'll probably be working together." Alister patted the smaller yellow Lombax on the shoulder, his green eyes full of puppy-dog pleading.

"Don't worry, the missions they give me are kinda boring. Escort these guys, make sure they don't kill themselves, blah-blah-blah...they're practially lemmings once the survey tools come out. They're trying to find places that we can mine trillium and raritanium at, so we don't have to rely on others as heavily for the supplies we need to fight the Cragmites.

"When I get back, we'll go Hoverbooting again, alright?" Kaden nodded, still a little sullen.

"It's not fair, though. I graduated from the Fastoon Academy with flying colors, and they say that I'm too young to join. I built Aphelion, and she's the best ship of all the Lombax starfighters out there, and all I get to do with her is joyride in the safe zones!" Alister laughed.

"Yeah, I know how you feel. Excited to show off being a hero for us." Alister turned away and walked up to his ship, Kephlion, which stopped it's rattling when he put a hand on it. _Overneurotic piece of junk. I wish I could build a ship as good as Kaden did._ The cockpit opened and Alister jumped inside. He flipped a few switches and then waved to Kaden as Kephlion rose up into the sky, shutting the cockpit before it flew off into space.

Kaden walked over to Aphelion, and hopped inside her, then crossed his arms in frustration.

"_I know how you feel_. Puh. Yeah, right. You only know how I feel because you're bored of playing bodyguard to those idiots in Geological Research." Kaden looked down at Aphelion's HD-800. "You know how I feel more than he does, don't you?"

"I haven't had a chance to test out my full combat ability aside of that one time the Space Pirates jumped us on the way back from Lumos last month! When did he say you'd be able to join the Praetorian Guard?"

"In a couple years." Kaden grumbled as he fumed. Aphelion shut her hatch and hovered up suddenly. "What? Hey!"

"Forget that. We're going to go have a little chat with their boss!"

"No-Aphelion, wait! Aphelion! Stooooop!"

----

Hathor finished signing yet another report. He was getting tired of being in charge of the Praetorian Guard. He'd thought that it would have been more than a desk job, but the spare tire he'd been getting spoke otherwise. It made his armor uncomfortable, and made him feel like his war days were over. He sighed in resignation, however, at remembering how long he'd been a part of Lombax history. How long he'd been a Four-Bolt Magistrate awaiting the chance to take the place of the last Elder Councilman of the Guard.

_I guess, seeing as I've hit over the hill at 150, my years of combat are over._ His ears pricked at the sound of an engine coming closer to his room, and ducked behind his desk as a blast of energy shot out one of the windows of his office, and he heard a scream followed by a soft _flump_ on the rug.

"Sir, I'm so sorry! It was all her idea, I swear!" Hathor looked up at Kaden, who pointed out of the window that had been blasted apart. He grumbled and looked out to see Aphelion descending to the ground to land, then turned to face Kaden and marched up right in front of him. The little yellow Lombax didn't quite know what to make of staring up at one two feet taller and a great deal chubbier than him.

"I've had rabble riots to quell in the past about important people in our society. I've had countless and tiresome calls for help sent out during the whole of this Great War that's been going on for two hundred years now! Never...**never**...have I had a young and unimportant Lombax and his ruddy, bad-tempered spaceship blow a hole in my office to barge in!!"

"I really am sorry. I tried to stop her, but she had the controls locked into auto-mode." Hathor still looked at Kaden with a condescending expression. _First you plug a robotic brain into your body in place of half of your own, then you build a ship that you can't even control half the time? What is wrong with you, boy?_

"What mad reason would she have for shooting out my windows and ejecting you into here?"

"She wanted me to talk to you." Hathor's tail bristled. He might be getting old and fat, but he was still far from weak, and would slap Kaden out the window he came in from in a second if Kaden didn't stop wasting his time. "About joining the Praetorian Guard. I've already graduated from the Academy, so why can't I?" Hathor sighed. He'd heard this argument before, but not with such a grand entrance.

"Look, your aptitudes clearly put you in for either Advanced Lombax or Geological Research, so I can't accept you into the Praetorian Guard until you reach sixteen. Why not be a good boy and start your internship with either of those first? Who knows? Give it a couple more years of physical training along your other work and you just might make the cut for us." Kaden's ears drooped. Same answer as Alister, expanded with different reasoning. "But!"

"But?" Hathor sat back down at his desk.

"If you keep on having these fits of extravagant showing off, I will not consider you even **if** you could qualify. So, for the sake of us all, **behave yourself**. And tell your ship that, too." Hathor paused. "Er...there is one thing I'd like for you to do for me, though, since you're in here."

"Yeah?" Hathor pointed at his paper outbox.

"Can you take those down to the processing facility on your way out? I've still got more to do." Hathor pointed at his paper inbox, stacked to twice the size of the outbox.

"Okay."

----

"Alister, sir!" Alister turned his head to a short white female Lombax.

"What is it, Injeen?" The short one saluted.

"Our survey's come up with next to nothing, and we barely have any ammo left after trying to get here. Those monsters just won't go down!" Alister turned and looked outside the cave. Yeah, Sargasso was full of Terratropes, as well as a few varieties of gargantuan saurian creatures, but what had his attention most was that the Kerchu were here. Their weapon systems vastly overpowered the toys the survey teams carried for self-defense, and the survey teams also didn't have the conditioning necessary to use an Omniwrench effectively in combat.

The Kerchu hadn't found this cave, but if it didn't even have so much as worthwhile metal inside it, it felt more like they knew that and simply ignored it. _Getting back to the ships is going to be a pain. They're practically defenseless while lugging their analytic gear around._

"Leave the equipment here, grab all of your weapons instead." Injeen cocked her head. "We have to make a run back for the landing zone." Injeen shook her head.

"I've got a better idea. I didn't quite make the grade for Advanced Lombax Research, but I did have a choice between Ground/Aerospace Engineering and this."

"Why didn't you pick that one?!" Alister exclaimed in a comical tone.

"I tried! They said that I was second only to Kaden, and that made me 'overqualified'. Besides, working this job's taught me more about new minerals and metals that I could introduce into our metallurgy experiments when I do go back to apply for that department. C'mon. I'll need your help, but we'll have a quick way back to the landing zone, and spook the Kerchu in style!"

"How far close were you to Kaden in Ground/Aerospace?" Injeen shrugged.

"It was still a big gap in my opinion. I didn't build a ship, but I did have a pet project of mine. It's in that big box I always carry, just in case."

----

Kaden walked out of the Praetorian Guard Barracks to Aphelion, rubbing his shoulders. He'd gotten lost inside that place looking for the processing department, and his back and arms ached from carrying those papers. They were heavier than he thought they were. It also taught him, as he reflected on how hard it was to keep a hold of them after ten minutes, that Hathor was right. He was still far too weak to be a part of the Guard. It was closing in on sunset when he'd made it back out.

_That place is way too big. You almost have to run anywhere to get where you're going._ Kaden reflected on that, too, and realized that it was probably built so spaced out in order to promote running to every destination inside. It was a clever means to enforce conditioning.

He'd also seen a group of some of the other 'of age' Lombaxes that were still unranked troopers in the Guard. Unlike Alister, they were rather muscleheaded, and were rough with each other; combative even to 'the little yellow pipsqueak, star of Fastoon Academy this year', but he couldn't accept. Not while carrying a fifty-pound stack of Hathor's paperwork. He almost swooned at the sight of them. Muscleheaded, yes, but they were downright handsome to him, and one of them was still nice enough to point him in the right direction, and walk with him there.

"Hey, Aphelion." The ship's engines revved up, and Alister poked his head out of the cockpit.

"So, how'd it go?" Alister asked Kaden in a bright tone of voice, tossing a pair of Hoverboots Kaden's size down to him.

"Wh-huh?" Alister jumped out of Aphelion and walked up to him.

"Your chat with Hathor. How'd it go? You were in there all evening, from what Aphelion told me."

"Oh." Kaden slipped the Hoverboots on as he talked about it. "It went...well...rather short. All the time I spent in there was because I got lost while carrying Hathor's outbox. Man, that was too heavy. But what he said was almost the same as what you said, except he said to 'get in shape and then I will think about it' as well." Alister laughed and asked.

"What, he won't take you?" Kaden looked up to Aphelion with a somewhat irritated expression.

"Not by blowing out his windows and flying by the ejector seat, he won't." Aphelion remained silent, but he could tell she was being smug all to herself. "Which reminds me, he wants us to not cause anymore trouble for him, alright?" The ship's nose pitched as though she was nodding.

"Well, anyway, I think we should probably go back to Lumos again, what do you say?" Kaden nodded at Alister.

"I need more practice. I want more training. I really want to make it into there, with you, Alister."


	5. Chapter 4: Dolls and Dimensionators

4

Kaden leapt up into the old mining robot that Alister had lived in. He saw a lot of his old research on the Great Clock and the Zoni. _Judging from this, he made his only solace in undoing his mistake to be to go back in time and correct himself. He was wrong. He almost did a lot worse than trusting Percy._ Kaden turned his head towards a box that was left open. He looked inside it, and saw a bunch of junk inside. _Mementos of Fastoon, no doubt. Ah, my old boots aren't here. I'd thought that he would have kept those._ Kaden then remembered seeing his son zip around with them on, and rummaged around in the box for anything else that would have any kind of importance to him. He'd ran into one of their old holo-storage pyramids, and turned it on. The timestamp was set at about five and a half years after the last time they'd spoken to each other.

_I really wish, Kaden, that those days were back. It was fun while it lasted, but, I know what distance came between us after the Great War was over. You quieted down quite a bit, and shut yourself into your own lab for weeks at a time, and that made Rayna worry. _

_ Ever since we left Fastoon, the divide seemed to grow. I don't even know if you trust me anymore. It's been five years since the last time we spoke, and that was when you told me to leave the Dimensionator on Rykan V. When word finally got to me that you had joined _Blau Cannon_, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Kaden, piracy just isn't you. Won't you reconsider, and we'll both try to fix this mess together? _The hologram seemed to scramble as it rewound back to an earlier point by itself.

"I'm sorry, Alister. The way you were going to do it was wrong. If you had come with me, you could have had what you wanted. We'd be together, and as safe as our wanderings allowed." The recording stopped rewinding and began playing again.

_ Percival went to the Hall of Knowledge in Stratus City today, and he came back looking somewhat dismayed. I think that he's seen something there that he shouldn't have. Kaden, taking in a young Cragmite and caring for him, even during the days of the Great War...well, I'm surprised he stayed as sane as he has. Almost no one else cares about him but you. Maybe you can go talk to him after you get out of your lab today and see this?_

Kaden paused the hologram of Alister that he had in his trunk and put it down on a table. He missed Alister as much as he yearned for letting himself be known to his son. But he couldn't. Kaden couldn't save Alister from himself, and he was too ashamed that he'd hidden from Ratchet for so long that he had to keep hiding. He shook his head, and his ears drooped in sadness.

_Not yet. Not until I can face the ghosts of my own memories. Not until I can put the whole mess back together. I know Tachyon's gone. I know Ratchet saved the Clock and showed Alister his impudence. But what I don't know is...why in the cosmos did I care about a baby Cragmite? Why did I feel so consumed by my research of the Clock and the Zoni that I shut myself away, trying to make newer and more stable versions of the Dimensionator?_

Kaden took the egg-like machine out of the slim device on his wrist. He set it on the table and sighed. It ticked with the very rhythm of the Great Clock itself. It was his last version of the Dimensionator, capable of going through space to virtually any dimension, capable of going through time to virtually any era, without breaking space-time in the process. There was just ONE place that it could not take him, and he made sure that it wouldn't.

_Destiny. Maybe it was the whims of time and the Great Builders that lead me to do what I had done. But I'm not so foolhardy as to corrupt the Timelines. I could never do that. Doing so would ruin the Clock, and quite possibly not just destroy this universe._

_ ...it could destroy Creation itself. My duty as the Guardian will not permit that._

----------------

18 Years Before the Assault on Fastoon

"Kaden, wait up! The survey team's not as skilled as we are with the travel equipment!" Kaden beamed at the taller white Lombax, and sat down on the right side of the icy corridor. His tail didn't notice the cold, partly because of the only slip-up the installation of a positronic brain in substitution of his left brain hemisphere caused, so all of his tail except the very base of it had become paralyzed. He turned from Alister to a curious discoloration in the ice on the side of the corridor facing Kaden.

"Alister, what is that?" Kaden got up and started to hammer at the ice with his Omniwrench. Alister looked at Kaden with fright. Kaden was up to his antics of curiosity again. He lost count of now many times Hathor tried to forgive the trouble that he still managed to cause, even just out of wanting to do his own exploring and discovery.

"What are you, nuts?! What if you collapse the whole place on us?"

"Azimuth, sir! What's Kaden doing? We aren't at the objective point yet!" Alister cleared his throat.

"They've caught up, Kaden." Kaden stopped in the middle of his apparently fruitless assault on the corridor wall, and smiled.

"Ah, good. Can I borrow a plasma cutter? There's something here that I want to check out, and Alister's being whiny about killing us all." Alister's eyes widened in shock.

"I said no such thing! I merely 'what if'-ed about collapsing the place on us!" Kaden took the tools he needed from one of the other surveyors.

"Same difference to me. I'll catch up shortly with this, just go on ahead, guys."

"The real danger was outside the caves more than inside. That blizzard is awful, and I heard loud roars beside the wind! C'mon, let's go do what we came here for and go!" The survey team took off, and Alister almost followed, but stopped himself, more curious about what Kaden was up to than anything else.

"The ice is thick with Sarnite molecules. It's almost as tough as the metal itself. That's also what lends the place this creepy glow it has even without any light from outside at all." Alister looked around the icy corridor.

"If they don't find a trillium vein on this planet, we'll have to rely on Solana's ore and metal trade, and the Federation's not a generous party with the commodity. Wonder how come there's so much Sarnite here, if it's not even close to the same place that it's rumored to have come from?" Kaden shrugged and turned the plasma cutter on, starting to work along an area that would keep the stability of the place intact.

"Dunno. But the Cragmites don't know how to process that metal, let alone that there's quite possibly as much here as there is trillium. That's something we should be thankful for." Alister walked down a short ways, having seen a bright light further into the corridor.

"There doesn't seem to be a lot of Raritanium, either. Hey, Kaden, what's this?" Kaden turned to face Alister, who stood near a light blue crystal that looked the length of his arm and glowed more brightly than the ice. His eyes went wide in shock.

"Don't touch that!" Alister stopped his own curious reach. "That's a mana crystal. Solidified energy from a higher dimensional frequency. It's similar to Zoni energy in what it can do, but it's rate of vibration is significantly lower. The stuff is said to be a Class 1 Addictive, it can drive mundane minds really crazy really fast, and it's highly destructive." Kaden went back to work on melting enough of the ice to reach the discolored section of the wall, which proved to be something frozen inside. Alister walked up to be nearby Kaden, and to take a closer look.

A massive purple egg sat in front of Kaden when he was finished.

"Alister. This...this is a Cragmite's egg."

"We should warn the others to be on guard, in case of more of them." Kaden nodded, and lifted the egg out from its niche in the ice. "What are you doing?!"

"We're taking this back to Fastoon. Think of the types of research we can do with a live Cragmite that has been raised in our care, Alister. While you're doing that, radio the research team and give them this warning: Watch out for Cragmites and mana crystals." Kaden sailed off back to the landing area on his Hoverboots, and Alister sighed.

"Survey team, come in." Alister heard static at first. "Survey team, come in!" More static, followed by intense laughter. "Oh, for the love of the Great Builders." He grumbled and shot off deeper into the caves, careful not to touch any of the glowing crystals embedded in the ice, which became more difficult the deeper he went, as they became more frequent in their appearance. He found the survey team after a few minutes, lying on the ground, laughing and rolling around like madmen (and two madwomen) in a thick blue goo that also looked like the crystals themselves.

"Kaden? We have a problem."

[*ssbzsbdbzsbsbzsdbbzs*--is it? *wewrasfdfasfafa*]

"Well, aside of the intense interference, the research team didn't get your warning in time. They're all rolling in this blue goo-like stuff near the cryst-"

[*shasha* OUT OF THERE, DO YOU *wrkwek* ME?! THEY'RE IN *ffffzrzrr* AND WILL DIE IF LEFT ALONE! I'm on my way! *ffzfdsfsafreadasfsdaas*]

"Right." _So...whatever this is...it's probably a lot worse than the crystals. I'd better not touch it._ Alister turned his Hoverboots on, and tried to reach for one of the research team. He had to save even one of them from some horrible fate caused by this. His hand closed in on a female Lombax that looked like she had been mud-wrestling in the stuff, and just an inch away from picking her up, he felt an intense shock and was blown backwards onto the safety of the ice.

His head reeled, and he got up slowly, afraid that he'd been given a hard concussion, or worse. Kaden showed up beside him moments later.

"What is that stuff, anyway?" Alister was met with silence, and Kaden's ears drooped as he watched the others.

"We're too late. They're as good as gone. Whoever doesn't die will come back horribly changed. This stuff is more active than the mana crystals, even if it's practially the same substance. This...what's going on only occurs rarely, but there are whole planets made of such energy, in varying degrees of purity and activity. This stuff is highly radioactive, and highly mutagenic; the liquid form of a superconscious entity."

"So...what?" Kaden looked around, wary. He'd thought that he heard a ghost-like voice emanating from beyond the Lombaxes that they couldn't rescue.

"I hate to say it, but we'd better run. We're practically in the presence of a malevolant god. We can't colonize this world, because it's being infested by this stuff. Give it a couple deca-cycles, this whole planet will be like one of those worlds." Alister nodded. He didn't need to be told twice.

"Let's go, then."

----

_Why did I have to care more about this egg than the survey team? I lost us good men, and a couple women, to the advanced stages of mana corruption._ Kaden rolled the thought around in his mind, as the ships of the others were kept trailing Aphelion and Kephlion by an AI-slave link, having lost their masters.

"Is something bothering you? I can engage autopilot so you have room to ruminate." Kaden shook his head. He felt like everything was too much just because of his one moment.

"No, Aphelion. The slave links are probably stressful enough."

"Please. Kephlion's the one freaking out, and he's only got two to handle. I think I can manage my own systems along with the other five."

"Aphelion's got a mouth today, does she?" Alister chuckled as he spoke. Kaden only managed a weak smile.

"She always does this. Trying to one up the other ships that my collegemates built." Alister laughed at that.

"I'll have you know, I heard that." She spoke in a huffy tone and engaged the autopilot, and didn't allow Kaden to disengage it, all the way back to Fastoon.

----

Hathor tapped his desk in displeasure at Alister and Kaden's report.

"This is serious, you two. A whole geological survey team gone, just because you both were off rescuing...what was it again? A Cragmite egg?" Hathor leaned to the edge of his seat, elbows on his desk, "I ought to have you both punted out of the Praetorian Guard for your carelessness, but since we've still got this war against the Cragmites to deal with, we need every hand we can get. And that means-"

"No more leaving our job as escorts ever again, I know." Kaden turned away, his ears half-lowered in sulking. Hathor sniffed in irritation. Yeah, Kaden knew better. Unlike Alister, though, he was too young and too daring to care.

"Yes and no. It means that I've decided to put you on the forefront of the battle, rather than these lousy jobs that I know you're trying to have fun with." Kaden's face brightened up. _Finally, some action!_ "But the holo-vid optical data you provided me with involving the survey team disturbs me a lot, Kaden." And then Kaden looked bewildered at Hathor's additional comment.

"Why?"

"We just might have another problem to deal with immediately afterward, when we're done with the Cragmites. We've recieved reports from the Polaris Independence Group-"

Kaden snickered and whispered to Alister, "P.I.G."

Hathor cleared his throat and continued, "From them, we've recieved reports that five planets are undergoing the same disastrous condition. None of these worlds had extra-planetary defense systems, let alone a semblance of advanced civilization. I'm not saying that your mission is to deal with them; far from it. I want you to instead learn these worlds and avoid them, like victory in war, at all costs.

"Neither of you have the equipment to deal with the situation, and we're trying to get the Center for Advanced Lombax Research to cooperate in developing armor that is near-perfectly sealed against the radiation of those areas. Without that, we can't even find out what's causing the transformation to take place." Alister fidgeted.

"Would you happen to have our next orders, though?" Hathor sat back down at his desk.

"Not right away, no. Extra backup hasn't been called for yet. You're free to do whatever until I contact you."

----------------

Back in the Present, Torren IV

_I had Percival hatched from that egg, and Rayna helped me take care of him when I was off to do battle, but most of the other times, I was there for him. I really tried to be a father. I think...that's how Rayna and I fell in love with each other. We had a foster son, even if he was a Cragmite._

_ I never wanted to lie to him. I never wanted to break the heart he grew. But that disappoinment, and that shame, it turned him around to be even more sinister than all of the other Cragmites combined. That hatred, and that bitter drive to destroy all of us except you, Ratchet, is what made him impossible for us to fight._

_ I bet you that he said he knew your true name and purpose, didn't he? Well, his design of such was to call you "Percival Tachyon the Second", and have you inherit all of his qualities. His malice, his empire, and his desire to wipe out all resistance. How do I know this? He said so when he attacked Fastoon. He wanted to take you to be his junior. But you probably never would have changed from what you are now, would you?_

_ "Buh-crab scawy, dah." You'd say about Percy._

Ratchet was racked by sobs as he paused the recording. He was the only one who could fight Tachyon, because of Tachyon wanting to turn Ratchet into an emotional cookie-cutter of himself? Kaden actually had loved that Cragmite like a son, rather than pitied him like Tachyon thought he did. Why did Tachyon misread it so badly? He took a couple minutes to steady himself, so that his tone of voice sounded more even.

"If only you hadn't lied to Percival, Dad. He could probably have taken the loss of the other Cragmites in stride, and been a much different person.

"_You defeated Tachyon, something even the Lombaxes couldn't do_. Clank said to me once. It was that one chink, his desire to revenge against our race so completely, that made it possible for even me to do it." Ratchet lowered the pyramid after speaking in futility to the paused holographic image of his father.

"One of these days, Clank, we'll find him. I know that he's alive now." Clank looked up at Ratchet.

"Why are you so certain?"

"Look at the timestamp on this message. It's from three days ago. If he weren't alive, do you think that he'd be able to record this three days ago?"

"Hmm." Clank observed that Ratchet was right. "But, what will you do when you find him?"

"I dunno. I'm kind of torn between hugging him or hitting him upside the head with my wrench." Kaden watched them both walk away as he hid behind a scrap pile, his eyes narrowed towards his son's mixed threat.

----------------

_Meanwhile, in no particular sector of Polaris..._

He awoke, yet all was pitch black. It had to have been a bad dream. He overloaded during his fight against Ratchet, and then...

_What happened then?! I don't remember!_

"Lawrence? Where am I?! LAWRENCE!! Where are you, Lawrence?! It's dark, and I feel like I'm floating! I can't see!" The familiar cone-shaped head of the robotic Dr. Nefarious drifted in space, his ocular sensors broken, and also forgetting the one key thing about space.

In it, no one can hear you scream.

"!!!!!" And he crashed again, the radio in his brain picking up an episode of _The Ozbrans_.

"Augh! Chiroooooon!" Özee shouted.

----------------

12 Years Before the Assault on Fastoon

"This war has become too long-winded, and the Black Breed is throwing themselves into suicide. We need something decisive, something to rid us of all the Cragmites in a fell swoop of technological innovation." Hathor spoke to the Council. "I really believe we can't afford to keep the Cragmites off of the back of the Independence Group forever, and this is coming from the mouth of the Elder Councilman of the Praetorian Guard, mind you." Alister stood up, fit to protest.

"We've already got one crisis on our hands, and now you want to place another one into them? It's enough to try and make an armor hermetically sealed against mana radiation for fifty of our best, but to divide them up and even so much as brainstorm-" The doors of the Council room opened, and Kaden walked inside. Alister looked at Kaden with polite confusion.

"Kaden, why are you barging in like this? We're still in the middle of a meeting."

"Kaden?" Hathor turned around, to see him walk past, holding a large rolled-up blueprint. "You're not part of the Council! You can be penalized for this-"

"Later." Kaden interrupted, an urgent look on his face. "Right now, I think I might have your answer to what to do with the Cragmites." Kaden held up the blueprint, and rolled it out across the table. On it was not a technical diagram of typical appearance, but two trees, one facing right-side up and one upside-down, both entangled at the roots, and embraced by the symbol of Vesica Pisces, which was also encompassed by a much larger circle of empty space.

"What crackpot mysticism are you going to try and push onto us now, Kaden?" Hathor bristled. He didn't have time for magic lessons, even if Alister took them somewhat seriously.

"Behold, the Divine Program. A diagram representing All. This isn't just a thing of magic, it is a thing of perhaps the most unorthodox and complex sciences that you could ever dream of!"

"What does this have to do with science?"

"Do you remember the history of the Fongoids? How at one time, they possessed the gift of time travel? Theirs was a civilization of technology so advanced at one time, they could make us look like toddlers playing with alphabet blocks! This diagram is...a representation of Creation in terms of space! How there are so many different dimensions, some parallel to ours, some branches of ours, and they **all have a common root**."

"Get to the point quickly, Kaden." Hathor tapped his shoulder as two guards approached.

"Well...why not make something to lock the Cragmites into a dimensional pocket? They wouldn't be able to go anywhere; to attack anyone, pillage, conquer, and destroy! They might even, in due time and because of their overt violence, kill themselves off by infighting!" Hathor held up his right hand at the guards, telling them to halt.

"You've got my attention, now. What would it take?"

"I only need seven bright and open-minded members of the Center for Advanced Lombax Research. Give me three Arcturian cycles, and I'll have a prototype." Hathor grinned and looked toward Alister.

"Too much to ask?" Alister sat back down, surprised.

"No. Not at all. The brainstorming's...already been done. I can spare that many, and probably put some bolt-brained assistants in to run errands for the other project in the meantime."

----------------

Present Day, Torren IV

Kaden wasn't the kind to play with dolls or toys of that kind when he was little. Curious that he seemed like that kind of sort to himself now, as he took out from his wrist device a small stasis capsule that he made for a Battle Ratchet that he'd bought out of guilt for the 'take me with you' look they had on their faces when they saw him. It was like they knew, even if they were made to be carnage machines by the Technomites, who the real Ratchet's father was.

He opened the capsule and let the action-figure sized Lombax clone wake up, and it looked up at Kaden, who had a sad expression in his eyes paired with a wry smile. "Hey, son." He said to it, and it scurried up onto his lap, looking in curiousity at his face.

"I guess I just find it very hard to show myself to him." It looked over in the direction that Ratchet himself had gone, and Kaden nodded. "I feel very ashamed that I'd stayed so far back from him." Kaden chuckled, and shed a tear. "But it was for his safety. I can't imagine why I didn't cry when I let him go to those Markazians, and asked Qwark for help, and now, I can't stop crying. He's still here, alive, after all that he's gone through, and I've just been the shadow at his back, aside of the two years that I was down. I'm not a father. I'm a coward, like Percy called me."

The Battle Ratchet climbed up Kaden's arm and hugged his cheek. "I'm really sorry for everything that you feel you have gone through, too. You might have been mass-marketed as a toy, but I know that anything that lives is sentient." Kaden picked the little clone up off of his cheek, and watched it curl up in his hands. "That's why it's so hard...to let go of what you love. I know what you are, and what you are not, and that's what makes you so special to me in a different way than Ratchet himself is." Kaden set the Battle Ratchet down into the stasis capsule, closed it and turned the cryosleep back on.

"I don't know what to say, be it either goodnight or goodbye. Either way, I still feel like I haven't ever treated you fairly. I certainly know that I didn't treat my real son with any fairness. That's why I'm so afraid to face him." Kaden put the capsule back into the wrist device, and cried himself to sleep among the junk heaps.

For the first time in nineteen years, Ratchet watched his father from out of his sight, with a silence that Clank enforced. _I didn't know this. I didn't know anything about him. I just thought that he was some over-adventurous louse that I'd gotten the worst of myself from._

"I want you to know, Ratchet," Clank spoke with a quiet, yet even voice. "That your father appears to be torn between being your father or simply avoiding you altogether."

"I think I understand." Ratchet slowly walked up to Kaden, sure that he wouldn't wake him with his next move, as he leaned up to Kaden's free ear and whispered.

_Whatever you decide, I don't hate you._


End file.
